Mitigation against DDoS Attacks on an IoT-Based Production Line Using Machine Learning

Abstract

Industry 4.0 collects, exchanges, and analyzes data during the production process to increase production efficiency. Internet of Things (IoT) devices are among the basic technologies used for this purpose. However, the integration of IoT technology into the industrial environment faces new security challenges that need to be addressed. This is also true for a production line. The production line is a basic element of industrial production and integrating IoT equipment allows one to streamline the production process and thus reduce costs. On the other hand, IoT integration opens the way for network cyberattacks. One possible cyberattack is the increasingly widely used distributed denial-of-service attack. This article presents a case study that demonstrates the devastating effects of a DDOS attack on a real IoT-based production line and the entire production process. The emphasis was mainly on the integration of IoT devices, which could potentially be misused to run DDoS. Next, the verification of the proposed solution is described, which proves that it is possible to use the sampled flow (sFlow) stream to detect and protect against DDoS attacks on the running production line during the production process.